


Stumbling Through

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-09 17:48:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12281436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: Jeremy Heere + Dyspraxia.  Enjoy.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 1: The fic
> 
> Chapter 2: Bonus headcanons that didn't make it into the fic.

Jeremy has just turned four, and Michael is almost five. In the morning before school, Jeremy’s mother ties his shoes for him, and at school Michael does it, grinning widely every time, proud of the newfound dexterity in his chubby fingers, and even prouder to have a chance to help his friend. The grown-ups think it's adorable, just like Jeremy’s tiny stutter and the way that the two boys always hold hands on the playground. Perks of being a preschooler. 

When Jeremy is eight, and still can't tie his shoes well, nobody thinks it's cute anymore. Michael still helps him with it, but they have to hide in closets and bathrooms to get the job done. Michael learns how to tie ridiculous quadruple knots, that nobody can undo. More than one pair of shoelaces is sacrificed to Jeremy having to go home and use scissors to hack apart Michael’s well-meaning atrocities. Jeremy teases him about it when they are older, and Michael has the grace not to point out that he was trying to _help_ because Jeremy needed it. 

Meeting your best friend before you even start kindergarten is a weird sort of thing. Changes happen so gradually that the mind doesn't register them, until you’re sitting around at fourteen, or sixteen, or eighteen years of age and a picture of your friend as a toddler pops up on his parents’ social media accounts (knowing somebody that long kinda obligates you to be Facebook friends with his parents), and you realize that you _knew_ that toddler, and he's coming over to smoke weed with you this afternoon. 

What that means for Michael is that he remembers, with perfect clarity, the Lion King sneakers that Jeremy wore on the first day of first grade, and the roughness of new laces in his hands. What it means for Jeremy is that he remembers the ache at the balls of his feet from walking around all day on his tiptoes, and a different kind of ache from having to tell Michael not to copy him, that it wasn't cool, and Cynth the OT lady was trying to teach him to walk heel-toe-heel-toe-heel-toe like a normal person. He wasn't trying to be a ballet star, or tall, or an awesomely lurching velociraptor. He is just w-w-weird, and _no_ he didn't know why. 

Jeremy slowly but surely gets to be ok at the whole shoe tying thing. He still favors shoes without laces for a few years, until his knowledge of what is cool and what isn't kicks in at around sixth grade, and it's all Converse from there. 

No one really comments that his laces come undone a lot. That's kinda part and parcel with being an awkward nerd who trips over his own feet. Jeremy’s used to that, and so is everybody around him. 

———————————

If there was an award to be won for shortest lived dyslexia diagnoses, Jeremy Heere would win it. He gets the diagnoses when he's nine years old, and can't really read. Because _b_ and _p_ and _q_ and _d_? Bullshit letters that look exactly the same through and through. They’re made of loops and sticks and apparently directions don't exist. 

When Jeremy turns ten, he gets into Lord of the Rings. Like really into it, and his one saving grace is that Michael loves it too, so marathoning it once a week is totally acceptable. One day Jeremy picks up the books, and he reads them. Then he starts in on Goosebumps and Animorphs and Xanth and all the other awesome books he's been missing. 

Miss Malaire, the demon of special ed, who talks to Jeremy like he's a cross between an infant and a delinquent, claims he's lying about every book he professes to like. He's not good at reading, after all. 

It's pretty rare for Jeremy’s mom to interfere with school stuff, and even rarer for Jeremy’s dad to do so, but it's dad who yanks him from the program. With Michael, Jeremy jokes that he faked dyslexia for a year to get out of doing book reports, right up until Gandalf swooped in and showed him the light. Michael agrees. Seems like as legit an explanation as any, as far as he's concerned. 

Deep down, Jeremy knows that he never faked anything, but he doesn't know what really happened, so he keeps his mouth shut.  
————————

Michael and Jeremy are friends through thick and thin. Their friendship is epic. It's poetic. It can withstand anything!

That doesn't mean that certain activities aren't especially fraught. The most perilous among them are games like Jenga and Uno. 

Jenga Incident Number One happens when they are both pretty young. Seven? Eight? It blurs together after a while. Michael wants to play. Jeremy has never liked blocks. Michael says that this is not blocks, it's Jenga, a game of balance and skill. Jeremy claims that that makes it even worse. They don't talk for two days. 

As for the Uno thing, Jeremy is probably twelve. He and Michael are on the bus coming back from a field trip to the museum, Michael wants to teach Jeremy to play, and somehow Jeremy ends up freaking out because he can't hold the cards right. Michael points out that he can hold Pokémon cards just fine, and it's all downhill from there. Cue a week’s worth of silence between the boys. 

Jenga Incident Number Two isn't as bad. Jeremy is fourteen, and agrees to play because Michael wants to. Twenty minutes into it, Michael snaps at him that he doesn't have to keep knocking the game over _on purpose_ , but something in Jeremy’s face makes Michael relent almost as soon as he begins, and for the rest of the day he's weirdly focused on doing things that Jeremy enjoys. Still feels shitty, though. 

————————

Jeremy’s parents aren't perfect, but neither of them would ever in a million years hit him. That doesn't stop the _Who is Beating Jeremy Heere?_ witch hunts from flaring up every couple of years, as he inevitably shows up at school day after day with bruises that he can't quite explain on his pale skin. Luckily, there is always somebody who swoops in at the last minute, with stories to prove that he really is just clumsy. His music teacher is able to point out that he falls out of his chair in class at least once a week. His homeroom teacher is able to stop Miss Malaire’s search for blood by telling the principal about Jeremy walking into the wall on the way out of class. Michael’s mom is able to verify that, yeah, sometimes she's afraid of Jeremy dying in her care, because he falls down stairs, kind of a lot. 

By the time Jeremy is a teenager, people have pretty much laid off asking questions, which is good, because his growth spurt is not kind to him. Michael’s the only one who really notices, and the way he notices is… odd. It's like a game, almost, where he counts the bruises on Jeremy’s arms or any bit of skin that happens to be exposed, and teases him mercilessly about them, but Jeremy can't even feel embarrassed because he's too busy trying to figure out the relentless and intoxicating warmth that blooms in his stomach at the simple fact that Michael can't seem to do this without touching him, and Michael is Michael, and as much as Jeremy is too busy being a heterosexual to admit that Michael is everything to him, Michael kind of _is_. 

——————-

Learning how to drive doesn't go as planned. At first Jeremy’s mom doesn't want to drive him to driver’s ed, which is pretty dumb, because it's the quickest way to solve the problem of not wanting to drive him anywhere, ever. Then Mrs. Mell offers to play chauffeur if Jeremy takes the class with Michael, and it seems he's good to go. 

Only he isn't. He passes the written test fine. It doesn't even take a lot of studying to be able to tell a piece of paper that he knows that a cold shower is not a suitable cure for illegally drinking a keg of beer, and that red lights mean stop. It's the practical application that doesn't work out. More than one practice spin with his instructor ends with the poor guy leaning over Jeremy to take the wheel, and with Jeremy’s heart pounding like it's going to pop out of his chest. The one time, after getting his learner’s permit, that Jeremy tries to drive his mom around, she ends up having a panic attack. 

Mr. Mell also makes a valiant attempt at teaching Jeremy to drive. He's steady and kind, which leaves Jeremy thinking it went pretty well. Not so. 

“Dad says never to step in a car with you unless I'm driving,” Michael tells Jeremy cheerfully the next day. “Guess that explains why I always win at Mario Cart. Speaking of which, Rainbow Road?” 

———————

Jeremy comes out of the Squip incident with a splitting headache, electrocution scars that cover his entire back, and not a single solitary cut or bruise on his entire body. It's almost uncanny for Jeremy, looking in the mirror and seeing how unbroken his skin is, all the while feeling like he's had his heart scooped out of his body. 

The Squip wasn't clumsy. It was all about cruel precision, all about calculation. It was a computer, after all, and any hiccups in its programming could be explained by it being forced to run on a system which, frankly speaking, wasn't up to its specifications. 

As long as Jeremy can remember, he's had a problem with stammering and stuttering, especially when nervous. That was one of the things that the Squip managed to get rid of, through a mixture of rerouting, manual control of Jeremy’s speech, and bouts of its own special brand of electroshock therapy. 

The first time that his stutter comes back after the Squip is out, his hand goes to his mouth, and Christine thinks it's because he's about to get sick. In a way, he feels like he is. Still, he's mostly okay at controlling it around Christine, and even Rich and Chloe and Brooke and everybody else from the play. 

Around Michael is where things are worst. Maybe it's that Jeremy has had years and years of time to get used to his friend, and old, non-Squip-approved habits die hard when he's thrust back into the routine of his pre-squip life. Maybe it's that there's so much that's unsaid between him and Michael, and he's afraid to say it. Either way, it's a vicious cycle where the possibility of stammering makes Jeremy nervous, and being nervous makes Jeremy stammer, and it's in Michael’s basement chewing on his lips which are _burning_ that Jeremy breaks down more completely than he ever has in his life. 

The apologies, which Jeremy most definitely owes Michael, come a few days later in the form of a heartfelt letter with eerily perfect handwriting that Jeremy doesn't recognize as his own, because no matter how hard he tries, he can't remember how he used to hold his pencil, just that it was _wrong_ , or how he used to write the letter T, just that it was _ugly_. 

At the time of the incident, Michael doesn't ask Jeremy for anything. The rant that started it all, about how Jeremy doesn't even talk to him anymore, about how he has no way of knowing if they are even still friends dies in his throat, and he holds Jeremy and rocks him instead, even as Jeremy is literally gagging on his own tears. 

They hang out a lot without talking after that, or with Michael talking, and Jeremy listening to whatever he wants to say.

They do manage to get their equilibrium back. It takes time, and it happens in fits and starts, but some things are stronger than the Squip’s destructive powers. 

———————

Turns out blanking most of a semester’s worth of academic instruction does not help Jeremy much, once he kicks the supercomputer that’s been doing his homework for him out of his brain. It's not like he's ever been great academically, but being on the verge of flunking every one of his classes is a new low. He's even done the most stereotypical thing ever and signed up for a basket weaving course to try to save his GPA, only he's failing that too, ‘cause it turns out that Jeremy Heere can not weave a fucking basket. 

The good thing, is that Jeremy has more back up than he's ever had before in his life. His dad is taking a more active parenting role. He's got his very own super shiny psychologist. Teachers at school are suddenly watching out for him. 

He still finds himself turning to Michael a lot, particularly when the school counselor brings up disability services, and his long dead dyslexia diagnoses gets looked up, and there is talk of it maybe being something else, which sounds suspiciously similar to dyslexia but isn't. 

“I don't really know what's me anymore,” Jeremy explains to Michael. He's sitting at his computer, and he has a webpage with a list of dyspraxia symptoms open on it. “Or, like, I know what's me, but not always where the Squip bullshit starts and ends, so I'd kinda like another take on if this stuff is something that's always been there, or something it messed with, or just teachers being crazy.” 

“Shoot,” Michael says. He’s leaning back in his bed, casual as can be, watching Jeremy closely even so. 

“Fuck. Of course the first thing would be speech difficulties.” 

“Which weren't made any _better_ by that time you swallowed a peppermint flavored neural blender, but…” 

“Yeah.” 

“Tendency to fall or bump into things.” 

“Am I allowed to laugh?” Michael asks. 

“If you have to.” 

Michael lets out an exaggerated cackle, which doesn't hurt coming from him. If anything, it feels better than if he'd played the comforting friend and tried to reassure Jeremy. 

“There are like a million symptoms,” Jeremy whines. “Oh look, here's one about trouble learning how to drive. Awesome.” 

“Does the list say anything about being a furry?” 

Jeremy looks around Michael’s desk for something to throw at him, finds the stuffed Tribble that he keeps next to the computer, and launches it at him. 

It misses. Of course. 

“What about bad aim?” Michael asks. “Is bad aim a dyspraxia symptom?” 

Jeremy opens his mouth to argue, gapes at the page for a second, and then closes his mouth again. 

“Oh shit,” says Michael. “It _is_ a symptom, isn't it?” He gets up off the bed, and comes to stand behind Jeremy, hands on his shoulders as he squints at the computer. 

“So, it’s like…” Jeremy gestures vaguely at the screen in front of him. 

“Yeah. That's you alright. Thoughts?” 

Jeremy shrugs. He's not quite sure at the moment, but he doesn't feel especially terrible. He's been working very hard since the Squip on not hating all of the little quirks that make him himself, and if a particular bundle of those quirks comes with a fancy name, and a couple of academic accommodations to hopefully get him through the end of junior year… well, it's hard to know what kind of noise the voices in his head will be making tomorrow, but for now they are quiet and at peace. 

“I think…” Jeremy says slowly. “I think I'm fine the way I am.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is just bonus headcanons.

Bonus headcanons - 

\- That secret handshake / high five deal that they have took Jeremy literally forever to learn, but since he's been friends with Michael forever, by high school it's basically muscle memory. 

\- Jeremy has stepped on the back of Michael’s shoe about eighty million times. Michael’s more or less used to the fact that if he's walking somewhere with Jeremy, Jeremy might accidentally step on him and pull his shoe off. When Jeremy first starts his relationship with Christine he accidentally trips her like three times before she learns to expect it. 

\- That “I navigate the dangerous halls” line has as much to do with Jeremy’s poor spatial awareness as it does bullying. There are lots of people, moving fast, and he can't really accurately tell how near or far from him they are. 

\- Sometimes when the Squip is giving Jeremy directions, it tells him to look left and he looks right, or it tells him to look left and he looks right, and this is an issue. 

\- Jeremy’s theatrical kryptonite is blocking. 

\- He can't eat food and walk at the same time. 

\- None of this adds up all that obviously to a disability in the minds if most people who know him, since dyspraxia isn't talked about that much, especially in the USA. People who do figure out that something is up usually peg him as maybe being on the autism spectrum, since there are a lot of symptoms that overlap

**Author's Note:**

> so I'm dyspraxic, and I usually purposely *don't* write characters as being dyspraxic, but Jeremy not driving made me think about the possibility (because not being able to drive is pretty much the bane of my existence, but that's neither heere nor there.). 
> 
> A few of the things in this story are things that I experienced, such as being completely illiterate for a lot of my childhood, and then suddenly super literate with no good explanation for what the heck happened (complete with being accused of lying about the things I'd read). That said, this fic is definitely not autobiographical, with Jeremy standing in for me. He experiences things way differently than I have and would.
> 
> Anyway, I waffled a lot about writing this, and then had an idea for a hilarious dyspraxia induced scene about trying to set up IKEA furniture, which then just didn't work with the tone of this piece, and yeah. I submit for you, dear readers, a slightly self indulgent fic about dyspraxic Jeremy Heere. 
> 
> Comments appreciated. Key smashes, criticisms, book reports, whatever


End file.
